52

Hell is claws and teeth, and bodies fighting. I sank my teeth into someone's chest, took in as much meat as my mouth would hold, and began to bite down. I wanted meat. I wanted to feed, and the leopard was screaming that if we didn't kill them, they'd kill us. Let go, they'd said, I'd let go, and now instead of the beast being something struggling to get out, it was me that was small and trapped and couldn't get out.

That part that wanted meat and blood and found struggling somewhere between sex and food was in the front of my head. I'd always thought being an animal must be peaceful, but it wasn't peaceful. It was simpler, but it wasn't peaceful.

I remembered only pieces. The taste of blood in my mouth. The feel of my teeth sinking into flesh. My nails cutting through someone's body. I was on my stomach, and I couldn't move. Couldn't move. Someone was on my back, and someone had my hands, and I couldn't move. Teeth on the back of my neck. A moment of mind-numbing panic, then it was peaceful. Like what had happened earlier in my office, when Nathaniel bit me there. Peaceful.

Jason was kneeling in front of me, off the edge of the bed, holding my wrists. The left side of his face was a bloody mess, and distantly, I knew that my nails had done that. His eye blinked out painfully from the bloody furrows. His arms were traced with bites and scratches, so it looked like he was wearing red gloves all the way up to his shoulders. His chest and stomach were bloody, too.

Nathaniel's teeth on my neck bit down a little harder, and my eyes fluttered up, and when he growled against my skin, my body writhed under him, not struggling, but offering. Jason spoke, and a trickle of blood trailed from his mouth, as he did it. "Next time we do this, you get tied up."

Nathaniel growled, but I didn't think it was meant for me.

Jason looked past me, to meet the other man's eyes, and said, "Okay, okay. Give me your beast, Anita. Let me swallow it down." He leaned into me, and the blood that trembled on the edge of his mouth fascinated me. I tried to strain toward that trembling drop of red, and Nathaniel's teeth made me stop, forced me to wait for Jason's mouth to come to me.

His mouth stopped just out of reach. I tried to raise my hands and touch him, but his hands forced my wrists down tighter on the side of the bed. He laid his mouth against mine, and I didn't kiss him, I licked the blood from the edge of his lip.

He drew back, laughing. "You'd rather eat me right now, than kiss me." But he leaned in toward me, his mouth half-parted, and I could smell the blood inside his mouth. I'd bitten him. I remembered the feel of his lip between my teeth. I made a sound low in my throat, and he laughed again, a purely masculine sound with his lips so close to mine that my tongue could touch them. His voice held that masculine laughter, and an edge of growl, "God, she's eager."

Nathaniel growled again, with his teeth still tight on the back of my neck. The growl was low and deep and vibrated down my spine like my body was a tuning fork. It made me push my body against his. My mouth reached for Jason, but my body was offering itself to the hard weight against the back of my body.

"Alright, but if she bites my tongue off, I'm going to be pissed." And he pressed his lips against mine, but I didn't try to bite him, because his mouth was full of blood and tasted of meat. I'd already started this meal, all I wanted to do was finish it.

My beast was right there, under my skin, only Nathaniel's hold kept it peaceful. The taste of fresh blood, of meat, and the feel of Jason's mouth on mine, brought the beast like heat against my skin. I could feel my body cooking with the heat of it, as if my skin was a container for something so much hotter than human flesh. Something that was almost there, almost ready, almost...

Nathaniel raised his mouth, and only his weight and Jason's hands held me down. He whispered something against the wound in my neck, I think he said, "Now." But I would never be sure, because in that moment my beast rose.

It rose up the line of my spine like heat. It spilled out my mouth and into Jason's, in a scalding, burning wave of power. It tore his mouth off of mine, forced his head back in a scream, and Nathaniel's body bowed on top of mine, and he screamed, too. My beast was like a sword thrust through both of them. I poured my energy into their bodies, until their bodies burst with it.

I saw Jason's skin split, and I felt Nathaniel tremble above me. One moment they were there, and the next I was drenched in liquid, warm, so warm, like being dipped in fresh blood, but it wasn't blood. It was clear and viscous--that fluid that the shapeshifters leave behind when they pull their bodies from one shape to another.

I was covered in it, dripping with it, and because Jason's claws were still pinning my wrists, I couldn't wipe it away from my face. I blinked at the wolfman kneeling in front of me. His fur was dry, like it always is, like magic. I stared into wolf eyes the color of early spring grass. His fur was thick and shades of pale gray. He opened a jaw that was longer than a human's, and full of teeth that any wolf would envy. He ran an impossibly long tongue over those teeth and stared at me with eyes that held things that I'd only begun to guess at.

A claw curled into the wet sheets on one side, and that claw was a black-furred hand. I turned back and did that slow, horror-movie take, where you know what's behind you, but you just can't keep from looking. You have to look, even with the feel and press of fur against your naked body. I knew what I'd see, and still I turned and looked.

Nathaniel's face was a strangely graceful mix of human and leopard. The face shape was closer to human than the werewolf's, but when I met those gray-blue eyes, there was no one home to talk to.

I'd gotten rid of my beast by bringing theirs, and now I was suddenly covered in warm liquid that mimicked blood, with two freshly turned lycanthropes holding me down. Nathaniel put his furred hands against the bed on either side of me, and he flexed those hands, and claws like white knives sprang out from his fingertips. Just seeing them, lying there, unused, made my pulse speed just a little.

I knew they wouldn't hurt me. I trusted them. But part of me trusted Jason and Nathaniel more than I trusted their beasts. I tried not to be afraid, because fear is like spice for their meat. Fear excites a lycanthrope, it just does. So I lay very still and tried to calm my heartbeat, tried to think how to ask them to let me go, without sounding like a victim.

Nathaniel moved his hands so that they lay on either side of my body, with the fur of his thumbs caressing my skin. My heartbeat didn't like it. Neither did I. He flexed his hands again, and the claws vanished into the fur. He caressed that fur down the sides of my body, and that brush of warm, warm fur brought my breath in a shuddering line.

His voice was more growl than anything else, when he said, "I've never had hands before when I shifted." He put those "hands" back on either side of my body, so close that the edge of the fur touched the sides of my breasts. He pointed the claws downward, and I felt his muscles flex against the side of my body. His hands were right next to my breasts, and I felt his claws grip into the bed. He began to pull those claws downward. The sheet ripped, but it was the sound of the mattress tearing that brought a sound like a whimper from my throat. The mattress made a meaty sound, as his claws tore through it, easily. He moved his body so that he could trace the outline of my body against the mattress and sheets. He carved the outline of me with his claws. And I couldn't not be afraid.

Jason laughed, and strangely that masculine chuckle translated just fine through the wolf's throat. The sound made me look at him. He flashed fangs as he said, "Don't be afraid, Anita."

"Then let me go," I said, and my voice was nicely calm, barely a tremor. If they'd been human they wouldn't have been able to taste my speeding pulse, or smell my fear. But they weren't human.

Nathaniel collapsed his body on top of mine, and he was taller, broader, more muscled, or muscled in places he hadn't been before. It was like a different body pressed against mine, one I'd never touched. The fur was thinner on his chest, stomach, groin, but the skin was warmer, almost hot against my naked body, as if in this form his blood ran hotter.

He licked my shoulder, and a sound very like a small squeal came out of my mouth. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing, just my breathing. Not on the feel of his body, or of Jason's hands with their not-so-retractable claws tickling my wrists. I breathed, breathed while a tongue that was rougher than Nathaniel's licked in long, thick sweeps across my shoulders and upper back.

When I opened my eyes again, my pulse was normal, and I realized that Nathaniel was cleaning off the clear goop that he and Jason had gotten on me. He growled next to my ear, "We got you messy."

"Yeah," I said, and my voice was a whisper.

He settled his hips against my thighs and did a small, powerful movement, somewhere between a wiggle and a push. He was suddenly resting against my ass, and I could feel that he was different there, too. Bigger, it felt like, but I might just have been scared. Everything seems bigger when you feel threatened.

He made a sound by my face, sort of a snuff, not like he was sniffing me, but like it was a noise that I should have understood. "You're hungry. Hungry like we are. I can feel it."

I fought to keep my pulse nice and normal, my breathing even. I wasn't going to do anything to escalate this, not if I had a choice. "I'm not hungry," I said.

He leaned harder against me, sliding lower between my legs, not inside, but moving that way. The thought sped my pulse, I couldn't help it. He rubbed his furred cheek against the side of my face. "You need a shower."

"Okay," I said. At that point I'd have agreed to anything that would get me on my feet and out from under the two of them.

"We're not going to eat you, Anita," Jason said. "If that was really an option Jean-Claude wouldn't have trusted me with you, you should know that."

I raised my face and met those wolfish eyes. "Sorry, but you guys going all tooth and claw on me, makes me wonder."

"We won't hurt you," Jason said.

"Then let me go," I said, and my voice was even, normal, my pulse slowing down.

"Not yet," Nathaniel said, with his face still pressed against my face.

Jason looked at him. "Why not?" he asked, before I could.

"Because she still needs to feed the ardeur."

I wouldn't have thought that a wolf face could show that much incredulity, but Jason's did. "Anita doesn't do furry."

The leopardman on my back moved his hips another fraction of an inch down. He pushed against me, not inside, but knocking at that most intimate of doors. "You are empty inside, I can feel it. I couldn't feel it before."

Saying it once, was wishful thinking, twice, and I tried to look inside myself. Tried to see the ardeur without raising it. I needed some kind of metaphysical gas gauge, but all I could find was an emptiness in the center of me. A place where something should have been, and there was nothing.

"I feel it," I said.

"I don't feel tired, now, Anita. I feel new." He moved gently against me. "Say yes."

"Let me go, and maybe," I said.

"I like holding you down. I like us both holding you down," he growled against my skin.

"I thought you didn't like to be in charge," I said.

"I don't usually, but today I do. Today I love the feel of your body under mine. I love feeling you fight not to struggle, not to panic. I can taste your self-control on my tongue. I want to lick it away."

"Nathaniel," I said.

"Say yes, Anita, just say yes. Feed the ardeur, then you can shower, while we go looking for other things to eat."

"What other things?" I asked.

"There are supplies deeper in the underground," Jason said, "we've got too many wereanimals in here now not to be stocked up."

"Stocked up on what?" I asked.

He leaned in, hands still on my wrists. "Nothing human, nothing illegal, promise." He licked my face, a quick flick of the tongue, and then he laughed, and it wasn't masculine, it was just Jason making a joke. Jason who would make a joke on the way to hell, even if it meant extra time and a worse punishment. No matter what form he was in, he was still Jason.

That thought made a tension go out of my shoulders, out of my body, that I hadn't even realized was there. It was still Jason under all that fur and claws. It was still Nathaniel rubbing his cheek against me.

Once upon a time I'd begged Richard to show me his beast. But when he did it, I hadn't been able to deal. It took me a long time to realize that Richard had shown me his beast in the worst light possible, because part of him didn't want me to be able to accept the beast, because he couldn't. I'd run from him after seeing him eat Marcus. I'd run from him to Jean-Claude, because the vampire had seemed less the monster that night.

Was I still the same person who hadn't been able to deal? Was I still the person who could deal with the handsome prince, but not the beast? Was it beauty, more than love, that moved me?

Nathaniel pushed gently against me. "If you don't feed now, who will you feed from?"

"Graham really is just down the hall," Jason said. "He'll be in human form because Meng Die won't do him furry. She won't even sleep with him furry."

I didn't want Graham. Was it just the human form I was in love with? Was it some anthropomorphic idea that I loved? Shit. These were just not the kind of relationship questions that the magazines gave you answers to. Did Miss Manners have an answer for being freaked by your boyfriend's animal form? I doubted it.

Jason drew his claws delicately away from my wrists. "I'll get Graham and send him down."

"No," I said, and reached for his furred forearm. The fur was so soft, and his arm was so real. "No, I don't want Graham."

Jason gave me another of those looks, that said, you're joking. "You don't do furry, Anita."

"But I do Nathaniel, and I do you, on occasion."

He grinned, though it wasn't exactly the same coming from the wolf muzzle. "On occasion." He sank back down in front of me. "You want me to be your puppy tonight?"

"I was thinking more that we'd just fuck," I said.

His face was either more expressive than any wolfman I'd met, or it was still enough Jason that I could read his face. He was still under there, somewhere. I'd surprised him, not in a bad way, but I'd truly surprised him.

Nathaniel pushed against me, and he whispered against my cheek. "Is that a yes?"

"Yes," I said.

He made a sound that was half-growl, and half pure eagerness. He raised up just a little, and then plunged himself between my legs. I was screaming before he'd finished, and not in pain. He was bigger, thicker, more, and all those extra bits were plunging inside me.

53

He brought me with the size of his body, the rhythm of his hips, and the flash of white claws like small knives against the tenderest parts of my body. The thought of what those claws could do to me if they wanted to, brought me struggling under him. Everything that I'd fought not to do, I now let myself do. I struggled, I screamed, I fought, and he held me carefully, delicately, but with no doubt that he could have torn me to pieces if he'd wanted to. It was both the most delicate of lovemaking, and the most dangerous. Not because of what he did, but because of what he could have done.

He raised me to my knees, cradling me against his body with his arms, and I caressed my hands over those arms, those muscles, that fur, so soft, and so different from the wolf. I pet him, not like you'd pet a dog, but like you'd pet a lover. I felt his rhythm change, knew he was close, felt his body strain not to claw me to pieces. Felt the dainty press of the tip of each of those claws, as he held them against my flesh. I came watching the pinpoints of those blades begin to crease my skin, almost, almost cutting, almost, almost piercing, almost, almost killing. At the last moment, he retracted the claws and held me hard and fast against his body, with the fur and padding of those hands lost somewhere between leopard and man.

The ardeur fed. Fed on the strength of his body, the heat of his skin, and the spill of his seed, which spilled hotter inside me than anything I'd ever felt from a man.

A thought cut through my mind, He isn't a man. The words weren't angry, but the emotion that came with them felt like it would burn a hole through my skin. Rage, such rage, and I knew who it was before the door opened.

54

Richard strode through the door, and his energy flung across the room like hot sparks from a fire. It hurt where it touched my skin, like small biting insects. What do you say when you find your ex-fianc¨¦e fucking a leopardman? Richard knew just what to say. "The last time I saw anything this sick was in one of Raina's porno movies."

Jason rolled off the bed and faced him. I think he was trying to give Nathaniel time to stand up without me attached to him. Or maybe he was trying to give me time. Whatever his motive, he stood between me and his Ulfric, and that wasn't the wisest thing he'd ever done. Brave, even gallant, but not wise.

Richard's power filled the room like scalding water. Nathaniel rolled off the bed, and I wondered if the air was as heavy and hard for him to breathe as it was for me. The thought was enough. I knew that he felt Richard's power like something you had to fight to walk through, like Richard's power was some sort of storm, a blizzard, or a sandstorm. Something that would blind you and take your life, unless you found shelter.

My shelter was crouching between the bed and the door. The wolfman was tall and broad and dangerous. Richard in his human form should have looked frail, but he didn't. He could have been a foot shorter, and with that much power rolling off of him, he would have seemed huge.

"Get out of my way, Jason. I won't ask again."

"Tell me you're not going to hurt her, or Nathaniel, and I'll move," he said it in a deep growling voice that would have given any red-blooded human pause, but Richard wasn't human.

Nathaniel was off the bed and moving toward them. Richard would hurt Jason enough to get him out of the way, but he'd hurt Nathaniel for other reasons. Reasons he might never admit out loud, but I didn't want to see it. I called Nathaniel back to me.

I had a gun under my pillow, but I didn't want to shoot Richard, and unless you're willing to shoot, a gun is just a rock made of metal. I was still trying to think of something to do that would make this less awful, when Richard backhanded Jason.

Blood flew in a little arc, sparkling in the lights, but Jason stood his ground. He didn't offer to fight back, but he didn't get out of the way, either.

I yelled, "Richard, no!"

He picked Jason up like he was a dumbbell. Clean, jerk, Richard's arms bulged with effort as he lifted the werewolf over his head and held him there for a heartbeat.

We had one of those frozen moments, where everything slows down and you know bad stuff is about to happen, and you can't stop it. You can make choices and change what gets damaged, but you can't save it all. I was drowning in Richard's rage, his power boiling like a sea. I'd touched his rage before, his beast, and this wasn't it, not exactly. I had a second to realize that his rage tasted like an old friend. It was my rage, or tasted more like mine. I only had time for my aha moment, then he threw Jason, not across the room, but at the bed. Maybe he meant to hit me, but I rolled off the bed, and when Jason landed hard enough in the middle of it to collapse the frame, no one was on the bed but him.

I was on the far side of the broken bed, and Nathaniel was with me. He'd put himself a little in front of me. He hadn't pushed me behind him like I was a damsel in distress, but it was close. I was his Nimir-Ra, and supposedly his dominant. Shouldn't I be in front?

Jason lay on the collapsed bed, stunned. He'd been thrown from less than eight feet onto a bed, and he was breathless, frozen while he recovered. I didn't have the recovery power that Jason and Nathaniel had. Maybe me being in front wasn't bright, but shit. I didn't know what to do. Like so often with Richard, I didn't know what to do.

"Why don't you all get back on the bed? I'm sure it's a hell of a show. Raina and Gabriel would have loved it." Since I'd had to kill both of them so they wouldn't star me in a rape/snuff film, it was a truly vicious cut. But the time when that kind of shit from Richard could make me angry was passed. I was afraid to add my anger to his.

His power was everywhere, as if the very air stung and burned. But it wasn't just his rage I could feel. Disgust, horror, and under that the thing that fueled the rage... envy. Why envy? And he was too wide open, he was hardly shielding at all. I got my answer.

It was as if someone threw a puzzle into the air, and I saw pieces. Clair and Richard in bed. Richard doing his usual vigorous job of it. Clair shifting in the middle of it. Her claws cutting up his back and shoulders. Clair in human form, screaming.

Richard shoved his anger at me, and I stumbled as if he'd actually pushed me. "Stay out of my head."

"Then stop projecting so hard that I can't help but hear it."

He screamed, a full-throated cry of rage. It echoed in the big room, and I heard running out in the hallway. I knew who this was, too, or at least what.

Three people spilled into the room. One woman, two men, all with guns. They pointed them at Richard. Claudia, who was almost as tall as Dolph, and had broader, more muscular shoulders than most of the men in my life, did quick eye flicks around the room, taking in everything. Her tight ponytail flicked as she moved, because it was high on her head. A girl ponytail to offset the lack of makeup and those amazing arms. I didn't recognize the men with her, except that they held guns like they knew how, but I'd come to expect nothing less than professionalism from Raphael's people. The wererats didn't recruit amateurs.

"What is happening here, Anita?" Claudia asked. Her voice was even, just a little tight, as if she were gearing up to do her job, and she'd have less qualms than I would about that job.

"A difference of opinion," I said.

She laughed, not like it was funny. "A difference of opinion, well, hell."

"This is not Rodere business," Richard said, "it concerns the pack and the pard, not the rats."

Claudia's gaze went around the room again, took in the bleeding werewolf and the collapsed bed, my hand on Nathaniel's arm to keep him with me and away from Richard. She came back to Richard and smiled, again not like it made her happy. "This doesn't smell like pack or pard business, it smells personal."

"That's not your call," he said, and his voice was lower, not growling, but lower.

She smiled again, and this time it was just a baring of teeth. "It is when we we're being paid to guard the Circus and everyone in it. You've already bloodied one of the people in our care, Ulfric, we really can't let you harm anyone else."

"He defied me. No one gets to defy the king. Raphael would agree with that." He'd turned to face her, and I realized that he was one of the men in my life that didn't look frail next to Claudia.

"What our king would agree with and what he wouldn't is not in question." She sighed and lowered the gun to point at the floor. The two men followed her lead.

Richard turned back to stare at the bed and the rest of us. He even took a step toward the bed.

"No, Ulfric, you don't just go back to abusing them. We may not be able to shoot you without political problems, but we also will not stand by and let you abuse those we have contracted to protect."

He looked at her, and all that burning power seemed to draw away from the rest of the room, to concentrate like some great weapon. I wasn't close enough to feel it, but I was betting that all that power was now focused on Claudia.

She shook her head, like she'd been slapped. The two men with her moved back from Richard, as if they wanted more room to maneuver if things went wrong.

Claudia answered him, her voice warm with the beginnings of her own anger. "No one disputes your power, Ulfric, it is great. It is your self-control that I question."

Richard was mad, so mad, and he was looking for a fight. I'd rather it not be me, but I didn't think things would escalate as far with us as it would with the wererats. Someone could get seriously injured, or worse. Richard being in a pissy mood wasn't worth someone dying over. I know, I know, it probably wouldn't go that far, but the wererats were usually ex-mercenaries, or ex-military. They fought for keeps when they fought. Richard wasn't either of those things. He got mad, but he didn't really like going for the kill. It could all go so badly, so fast.

"Everybody ease down," I said. "It's not worth dying over."

Richard looked at me. "No one's talked about killing anyone, except you."

"Richard, all three of the guards that are looking at you wondered about killing you the moment they hit the door. Ask them, go ahead, ask them."

He glanced at the wererats, still with their guns pointed at the floor. "Is she right?"

The three of them exchanged glances, then Claudia answered, "Yes."

"You thought about killing me, just like that?"

"We didn't know it was you doing the damage, Ulfric. But we are allowed to use any means necessary to do our jobs. We cannot allow you to harm anyone under our care."

"You're not allowed to interfere with me disciplining one of my wolves, either."

She nodded. "You are right. It is not allowed for one animal to interfere in the internal disputes of another. If you can prove that this is pack business, and not personal, we can leave, and you can finish this, but you must prove it is business."

One of the other men, who was small and dark, and looked like he'd spent a little too much time in rat form, said, "Smells like jealousy to me."

"Roberto, you are not helping," Claudia said, her eyes still on Richard.

Jason rolled over and started to sit up. He moved like it hurt.

"He defied me," Richard said, pointing at Jason.

"How?" Claudia asked.

"He refused to get out of my way."

"What would you have done if I'd moved?" Jason said, and his voice held something thicker than normal, as if he was still bleeding inside his mouth. "If you didn't throw me around, who would it have been? Nathaniel, Anita? She doesn't heal like we do, Richard."

"I wouldn't..."

"When you hit the door, you were going to hurt someone," Jason said, and let blood trickle from his mouth, because he couldn't spit in wolfish form. "I thought it was better it was me."

Some of that burning power began to fade. Richard's shoulders slumped, and he screamed again. A full-throated, all-out scream, as long and as loud as he had breath for. He dropped to his knees and smashed his hands into the floor. Apparently, he liked doing it, because he kept smashing his hands into the carpeted floor, over and over. Only when the stone floor underneath began to buckle visibly, did he stop.

The sides of his hands were bloody where he'd scrapped them on the carpet, like really bad rug burns. He raised those bloody hands up and just knelt there staring at his hands. He didn't cry, didn't swear, didn't do anything.

We all froze, waiting for him to do or say something. At least a full minute passed, and he hadn't moved. Claudia looked across the room at me. I shrugged. I'd been engaged to him once, and I'd been his lover, but I had no clue what to do. That was one of the problems with Richard and me, we so often didn't know what to do with each other.

I started to walk around the bed, but Jason grabbed my wrist. "Close enough."

I didn't argue. I just stopped and looked down at him. He was still staring at his scraped-up hands. "Richard, Richard, are you in there?"

He laughed then, but it wasn't a good laugh. It was one of those laughs that held more bitterness than humor. Everyone in the room, except me, jumped when he laughed, as if they'd expected anything but that. I'd learned not to try to guess what he'd do.

"I want to lick the blood off my hands," he said in a strangled voice.

"Then do it," I said.

He looked up at me. "What?"

"It's your blood. It's your hands. If you want to lick your own wounds, then do it."

"Won't you be disgusted?"

I sighed. "Richard, it doesn't matter what I think. It matters what you think."

"You'd think it was disgusting," he said.

I sighed, again. "No, Richard, actually, no. The licking will make the scrapes feel better, and you'll enjoy the taste of blood."

He frowned up at me. "You wouldn't have said that a year ago." It was almost a whisper.

"I might not have said it six months ago, but I'm saying it now. Lick your wounds, Richard, just don't live in them."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, and his anger flared, like a small hot whip against my skin.

"Don't get pissy, Richard. I'm trying to live the life I've got, not some dream of a life that I'm never going to have."

"And you think I am."

"You're Ulfric of the Thronnos Rokke Clan, and you're afraid to lick your bloody hands because someone else might think it's not very human. So, yeah, I think you're still pretending that you're going to get another shot at a life. This is it, Richard. This is who and what we are. This is it. You need to embrace that."

He shook his head, and his eyes glittered in the lights, as if there might be tears in those perfectly brown eyes. His voice when it came was even, no hint of those glittering eyes. "I tried."

I was shielding as hard as I could. I didn't want any more peeks into his and Clair's love life, but I could guess. "With Clair?"

He looked up, and the anger was winning over the tears. I'd never seen him this out of control of his emotions. I'd seen him angry, bitter, sad, but never this see-saw. It was like angry and sad were the only emotions he had left. "You saw it, then."

"I'm shielding like a son of a bitch right now. I saw that you had a fight, a bad one. But that's about all I saw."

He opened his mouth, then glanced behind him. "I won't hurt anyone, but this isn't a conversation for a crowd."

The wererats looked at me. I sighed and wondered if I was being stupid. Maybe, but I was going to do it anyway. "You guys can go."

Claudia gave me a look. "I don't think it's a good idea, Anita."

"Neither do I," I said, "but do it anyway."

She shook her head but motioned the two men through the door. She turned with the door halfway closed. She looked at me, and said, "We'll be right outside. You yell, if you need us."

I nodded. "I will, I promise."

She gave me a look that said she didn't believe me, but she went and closed the door behind her.

"Get out, Jason," Richard said.

"It's his room, Richard," I said.

"He doesn't get to hear this," Richard said.

Jason got off the bed, slowly, like he still hurt. "If I leave and you hurt her, neither you nor I will ever forgive you."

Richard stared up at the tall wolfman. They had a moment of simply staring at each other, and whatever they saw in each other's faces seemed to satisfy them both. Richard said, "You're right. I won't hurt her."

"What about Nathaniel?"

Richard looked past him to the tall, dark form of Nathaniel. "He needs to leave, too."

"Only Anita can order me to leave," Nathaniel said.

Richard looked at me, then down. "Two requests, clothes for you, and everyone leaves. Please."

The clothes were hard, because I was still covered in goop. What few clothes I had, I didn't want to get messy. What I needed was a robe, but I didn't have one in this room. I hesitated too long for Richard's mood, because he said, "Don't make me have this talk with you naked, Anita. Please." He said the please like he had the first time, like it was its own sentence, not an afterthought, but as if the please was more important than normal, and needed to be set apart.

"I'd love to get dressed, Richard, but I'm still covered in that clear goop. I'd rather not get it all over my clothes."

"I've got a robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door," Jason said, "it should fit."

"Since when do you wear a robe?" I asked.

"It was a present."

I looked at him.

"Jean-Claude thought I looked cold." I think he tried to grin at me, but the wolf muzzle just wasn't made for it.

"Let me guess, black silk?"

"Blue, to match my eyes." He started toward the bathroom, not exactly limping, but close.

"I'll get it. Everybody stay put, and be nice, until I get back." I went for the bathroom, though search me if I could remember a robe on the back of the bathroom door. But it was there, hanging exactly where Jason had said. It was a lovely blue, sort of soft and bright all at the same time. I'd been more tired than I'd known to miss it last night.

I put the robe on and caught sight of myself in the mirror. The remnants of yesterday's makeup still outlined my eyes, though it had smeared a little so it looked a little more Goth than my usual. The lipstick was gone. The clear goop had dried one side of my hair into a case of bed head that only a shower would cure. My body was covered in more of the drying goop, so that it was beginning to flake as I moved. If you have sex with condoms, you forget that what goes in eventually comes out, and I took the time to clean up just a little, because it was too embarrassing not to.

The blue was too pale for my coloring, and too big through the shoulders. It was one of those moments that I wondered why anyone wanted me. I just didn't see it. Of course, feeling this bad about myself might have had something to do with dreading Richard's little talk. Maybe.

I took in a lot of air, let it out slowly, and opened the door. It was one of the braver things I'd done in awhile. I'd much rather have dealt with bad guys than with Richard. Bad guys were simple, kill them before they kill you. Richard was a lot of things, but simple was so not one of them.

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